For me, it was never bare resolution or ”sharpness.” In fact, somewhere there must be all the articles I wrote way back then pointing out that IMO what is called sharpness very much depends not on sheer acutance alone or resolution, but on how the edges are corrected. It was the degradation of color from lack of APO correction that I was disturbed by. I felt that sharpness could not be considered without taking correction into account, etc.
Otherwise I would not have sold off my Zeiss Makro-Planar 50mm and 100mm, which were sharp enough, but for which the color was not corrected well enough and to my eyes they were too “contrasty.” I found lenses like the Voigtlander 125mm APO-Lanthar f.2.5 and the Leica 100mm APO Macro Emarit-R more to my taste. And I found the very sharp and very well-corrected Coastal Optics APO 60mm f/4 lens perfect as a copy lens, but lacking character IMO if used for other work. Perhaps a lens has to have enough flaws to have character, but that does not amount IMO to opening the door to uncorrected lenses and expecting to see something desirable just because they lack correction. LOL.
What I totally agree with is the suggestion to choose a lens for the kind of work you are doing. I have very well corrected lenses, some that are fast wide-open, but I also have a whole collection lenses that are full of distortion, but of a kind I find useful.
Examples would be the Trioplan 100mm, the Zeiss Biotar-style lenses, Meyer optics, lenses with swirly bokeh, and right on down the line. I think that Klaus Scmitt and I call this “lens painting.” I also have lenses like the CRT-Nikkor that are specially distorted in a way I find beautiful.
Then, I have many older lenses with a special draw or character, like the Noct Nikkor, 50 mm 1.2 Nikkor, El Nikkor 105mm APO, a ton of old 55mm Micro-Nikkors and on and on.
And I still have the old standby nikkors, 14-24mm, 24-70mm, and 70-mm.
So, there are many lenses, many styles of lenses, and many ways to use lenses.
I find it hard to fit into many of these kind of discussions, because I stack focus. And to do that, I have an actual need for fast, highly-corrected-wide-open lenses, again: for a specific purpose, to have great bokeh, but to also have razor-thin ultra-sharp focus, so that I can paint layers of focus against that bokeh background.
So, I found those articles interesting, at best, but not very much related to my work, except as I mentioned, choosing a lens for specific work.
